Enzo Maresca has spoken on whether he will play Moises Caciedo, Romeo Lavia and Enzo Fernandez as a midfield three.
The Blues spent a lot of money on the midfield trio but for a variety of reasons, mainly injury issues to Lavia last season, the trio have only started one game together.
Maresca deployed all three on the opening day defeat to Manchester City, but he’s yet to do that since although it’s something that could be seen in the future.
Maresca on Lavia, Caicedo and Fernandez playing together
Having initially struggled following his British record transfer from Brighton, Caicedo has gone from strength to strength this season and has started every Premier League game.
Former Blue Emmanuel Petit labelled the Ecuadorian as the best midfielder in the league this season and it’s very difficult to argue against that.
Then there’s the Fernandez issue that Chelsea find themselves with and Maresca is still working out how to get the best out of the World Cup winner, despite his obvious quality.
The Italian made the bold call to leave him on the bench at Anfield last weekend and started Lavia instead which was the right call given the Belgian’s performance.
The issue facing Maresca now is what midfield to go with and the potential ramifications of regularly benching an investment of over £100m.
Lavia and Caicedo appear to offer a better balance and more defensive security, but there’s also the possibility of using all three, something Maresca refused to rule out when asked.
“I think the first game against City we played with all of them,” he told his pre-match press conference.
“The main thing is that everything we do is to have defensive balance. So sometimes the decision that we take is also because we think we can have defensive balance and offensive balance.”
It’s something Chelsea fans thought they would see on a regular basis when all three were signed, but that hasn’t proved to be the case.
It would also require Cole Palmer to be moved out of his preferred number ten role and it feels like the benefit of an extra midfielder player wouldn’t outweigh the benefits of Palmer playing centrally.
